Apple May Ditch Internal AI Siri, Nothing Headphone (1) and Phone (3), Grammarly AI Work Suite

I can't just sit here and do nothing. That's all I've ever done. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. A grab bag of topics today like Grammarly acquiring the email app Superhuman. John Oliver had a segment about AI slot, probably because he listens to this show.

It's good. It's finally not hotter than Florida, so that's good here in Michigan. The world has reached equilibrium. It was pretty humid in here. No one cares, but it was very humid in my office, my shed. I did have to run the air conditioning, which feels weird when it's only 65 outside, but

Get at it. That's you're now you're just bragging.

I'm just saying I had to run the air conditioning because it was humid, not because it hot. Saying it's just weird. I was like, couldn't breathe in here. So anyway

That's welcome to Florida ten months after.

I'm coming to Florida in, like, three weeks.

Oh, wait.

Really? Yeah. We're gonna be in Orlando. I think we actually talked about this, but we're going to Orlando talking about this. We're gonna be in Orlando for week for soccer. Well, I'll have to figure out what we're doing with the podcast, but I figure I'll just be sitting in a hotel lobby somewhere with a microphone in a corner. So

Maybe we could finally come in and record in person after so many times

I'm trying to do that. Yeah.

Live from the show floor recording. I'll over to Orlando.

Does Apple have a studio somewhere in Orlando that we could use? Do they have a There's an Apple Store?

I know Apple, I know you're listening. 100%. Open a studio this week so we can Yeah.

I'm gonna

In Orlando.

I talked to Ben Cave a couple weeks ago about the Apple podcast thing. I'm gonna send him an email and be like, he won't know who I am, but I'm gonna send him an email and be like, hey, man. Can you set up a a pop up podcast studio for us in

Listen. That's free free marketing idea. Pop up Apple podcast studios, which this is not part of the rundown, you know, Apple is now on threads. The official Apple account is now on threads.

Oh, I did not actually know that.

Yeah. And people were like, oh, Apple's now on threads. And I I I posted, listen, Apple Podcasts has been on threads for, like, a year over a year, but they've not posted a thing. It's, like, just totally blank. And then someone from nine to five Mac was like, yeah, same thing on x. Apple has never posted. And I was like, what?

Yeah. They don't. They don't post.

They just

run ads.

They just run ads. There's not a single post on the at Apple x account. And I'm like, oh, okay. Well, never mind. Nope. No reason to get excited.

Which tells you they must have some kind of a deep something. Because most people, if you run an ad, you post something and then you boost that post on Right. X or whatever. But Apple's like, no. We just Nah. Mainline these things. We just feed them right right into the deep veins.

Have you have you have you seen the meme now where people are like, just a little something to take the edge off and they're like holding their what would be a cigarette, but they're holding, like, random things. Like, they'll hold, like, a can like a like a pro camera or they'll hold, like, a mozzarella stick.

I I have not, but I did start seeing everywhere. I don't know why. When I stopped drinking Diet Coke regularly, I started seeing how, like, apparently people used to call those, like, the they pull out the something cigarette from the fridge. Like, Diet Coke in the afternoon is like having a cigarette or something like that.

Oh, interesting. Well, posted a meme on on my threads account about what I did for something to take the edge off. So I'll just I won't spoil it. You can go look at it.

I'm so scared right now.

Do you know what the movie quote was from? I just can't sit here and do nothing. It's all I've ever done.

It's it's gotta be that one creepy Pixar movie. What's it called?

It is a Pixar movie.

It's a super weird one too. It's with the robot guy who goes up to the spaceship.

You don't know the name of this movie Wally. Yes. I was gonna say, what do you mean creepy? Wally's not creepy.

Dystopian. That's a better word.

Yeah. Can't

argue it's not dystopian.

It's not No. No. It's definitely dystopian.

It is it is

It's not creepy.

Some people's favorite, which I don't understand because Up is definitely the best Pixar movie. But it's

We don't this

Is that gonna be our bonus content? Are we gonna do a mops crossover and talk about best Pixar movies?

No. This just needs to be the next mops episode, which we haven't released one in months. And so this we just need I have

noticed that, by the way. Do a tier list of the Pixar movies. There you go. I just gave you some

We'll do Pixar movies. Okay. Let's talk about technology. I know this is not a movie podcast. Everyone's excited. Oh, but listen, last week I said we didn't have any five star reviews and I asked everybody to leave some and everybody showed up because now we have like one, two, three, four, we have seven, five

Some of you were creating like extra accounts just to leave. We appreciate it.

We appreciate you. Thank you. So five star review shout outs for Apple Podcast. Josh Murphy from The USA says, loves the host and the other guy. Neither of us are named there.

Yeah. He's one of those weird Wesleyan Calvinists.

Oh my don't have time to get into that. XR? No. Okay. C u Sid 1969 from The USA. Had very kind words about the show. Thank you. Nesser 900, battery percentage on left front pocket, lost both on that. P dot ninety four from Canada, said my downloads go to my desktop, but only since I heard the other guy do it. I tried it and I find it easier to manage. And then he says, sorry, Steven.

People feel so personally like, I'm I'm sorry, man.

I'm so sorry. You're doing it wrong, but

I'm so sorry. I can't do it. Yeah. Here's five

stars. It's okay. It's alright. It's only wrong if you put the Apple Pencil

on. Should be clear on this. I do there are a lot of things, because I checked, and I have a lot of stuff in my downloads folder. There are plenty of things that just go to my downloads folder. But if it's a thing I'm downloading to use right at the moment, right, I it goes to my desktop. So

Sure. If I'm manually choosing and it is something I'm gonna use immediately, yeah, I'll I'll do that to my desktop. But, like, the default setting, like, Safari downloads go to

Is there a default setting in Safari?

Absolutely. Yeah. If you go to Safari, you go to settings, and you go to the whatever it is, general. File

download location.

General file download location.

Do you know

what set as?

Ask for each download.

Every time?

I don't know. That's just what it says. I guess I could chain I literally, I didn't know the setting existed. Now I'm changing it to desktop.

This is what the whole conversation was about. The default.

No. Every time a download pops up, I just pick the desktop.

So, Jason, then set the desktop as default.

Well, I also don't use Safari. You know this. I use Brave. You know. This is not a surprise.

I thought you just used brave for to record here.

No. That's what you do.

Yeah. That's what I do.

I use brave for almost everything.

You wait a minute. I gotta change all these topics. We gotta

have a whole different show. Let's save it for either

hold on.

Let's save that for bonus Yes.

Personal. Or personal yeah. Bonus content. I don't even know. Wait a minute. Oh, I'm so disboneless. What in the world? I thought you were a default Safari user. No. What is happening? Anyway, this this show's off the rails. It's already off the rails.

It's summer. This is it's fine.

It's a summer show. Listen to as we record, tomorrow is Independence Day here in July 4. Don't lose a finger. Listen. Okay? Okay. Don't I am gonna go on a because you can you buy fireworks in Michigan or are they illegal?

I I don't know if they're illegal, but they're everywhere. So

Exactly. So they you know, in Publix here in Florida, you can get, like, these, like, prepackaged fireworks and they're pretty, they're they all just, like, spurt sparks. You know what I mean? They're just, like you know, they don't go in the air. Mhmm.

Yeah. We have those tents everywhere, but we had them when it was illegal. But according to SearchLab's AI overview, consumer fireworks are generally legal and can be used on private property with permission. I don't know if I believe it though, because this is AI, so it could be fake.

You never know. Sorry, speaking of AI, thank you for that transition. Speaking of, we've talked about AI in media literacy the past couple weeks a lot, and I was watching the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver because he has a whole episode called AI Slop, and basically rehashes a lot of what we have talked about and said on this show. So that's why I assume John Oliver listens to the show. Yeah.

Yeah. I never fall for AI videos. But Yeah. Well, if I did, would I know?

No. If you

fall for an AI video

The call's coming from inside the house. You know what I mean? Like, you don't you don't know.

Couple mixed metaphors there, but

Yeah. I know. I I just you know? But, anyway, I am not not excited for the future as AI videos get better and better. And, like, I've and I now I see people will post videos, you know, because there's accounts on Instagram and TikTok that just, like, share audacious clips, but they're like faceless accounts, you know what mean?

But what you should do is watch the first two and a half minutes of the video and then skip to that because you will just be blown away two and a half minutes in.

It's yeah. AI slot. That's what it is. Speaking of AI though, you use an email app that was recently acquired, which was Superhuman. So Superhuman is an email app supposedly that uses AI for stuff.

This is if Yeah. It's it's interesting. First of all, I love Superhuman, and I really like the people behind Superhuman. Raul Vora, the founder. I've interviewed him a couple times on stage for different things, and I've had him on a different podcast.

Catch the mistakes.

I don't want you to tell me that I should reword the, you know, this phrase because of whatever. It's like, no. Thank you. And so and you can turn those things off, but the the bummer is every time they add a new feature like that, it just comes on by default. So I'm hopeful though that this is like, an Apple Beats thing where, like, you can just buy Beats.

out real quick. I was gonna ask you as a user, do you find, like, the AI features of Superhuman are worthwhile?

Like, they Absolutely. I did not write about this. I'm going to now. I should have because it was like it was I when they were rolling this stuff out, I had a conversation with the CEO, and he he gave me a demo. We happened to I think it was when I was in Portugal last year, rolled it out and just, like, walked me through the changes that they're making.

Is it good enough? So I was looking at the pricing, and I've looked at Superhuman several times because I loved the design of it.

Yes, it's I think it looked like beautiful

app, but I'd always been I've never actually done it because the pricing is like $30 a month for, you know, like, a personal account. Yearly, I guess it's $300 a year or whatever. So would you pay for it if you weren't given it?

The only reason I wouldn't is because all of my personal email is in Gmail. I mean, sorry, not Gmail. It's in iCloud.

ICloud.

And so I'd still have to have a second email. If I could and I've asked them because iCloud now has quote work. Although, you wanna know the funny thing about iCloud thinking trying to position itself as like, hey. Put a custom domain in here. Now you can use iCloud for work.

Yeah. Yeah.

No one who makes work email accounts thinks that's real. What they're saying is people who are doing work email are not using iCloud mail. Right? They're using either Gmail or they're using Outlook for that or or Fastmail like we are.

So I use Fastmail. ICloud Mail also, they do not have as robust filters. So one of the things I have set up, and I've talked about it many times, is a filter like anytime the words unsubscribe or manage my email preferences are in the body text of an email, that immediately goes to a folder called newsletters and it skips my inbox. And that gets actually rid of a lot of spam. You can't set that filter up in iCloud Mail because they don't have a filter for body text.

And you need like 23 or something.

Yeah, I get it. Yeah, 23. So that was another issue. But I'd always been curious about superhuman. It always felt a little steep.

So here's an interesting thing about one of what superhuman is doing with some AI. You can tell it to basically read all my emails and figure out my tone. And when you get an email, you can just write in line. I think it's a command j. Respond to this email and decline their offer, but thank them.

So does it only work with Google and Outlook?

Mhmm. Yeah. Oh, never mind. I know. It's a bummer. I know. That's film and bummer. So but, again, that's because they just know their audience, and I think probably expanding that to other places is harder. And I and I don't know for sure how email works. I just know you click send and it goes to somebody.

Alright. Well, this this show didn't have a sponsor. I feel like we we just gave Superhuman a free sponsorship. So contact

Sending them the episode. I'll I'll be like,

hey, episode. Retroactively, we're gonna charge them for this. But, anyway, I'm curious I'm curious if they do it. I mean, if they support Fastmail, I would I would try it because that's I'm not moving back to Gmail.

Well, the other thing they do a really good job of is when you get an email from someone, it'll show you, like, their social links. There if they have a bio on, like, x or LinkedIn or whatever, it'll show you a summary of who the person is. Like, it just does such a great job. Yeah.

That's pretty slick. Oh, man. Well, now now I wanna try it. I'm not gonna move Google for it, but alright. We'll see. Maybe Grammy and Grammarly will bring him lots of stuff. But alright. Let's talk about some gadgets. Nothing nothing had a big had a big event in London where they announced Nothing Headphone One, their first over the ear pair of headphones. They already had the in ear earbuds, but now they have the over the ear ones.

I understand that if you are going to introduce a new headphone product, this is sort of like, they managed to be a lot more distinct than Sonos did. I think you said Sony Sony ace, but I think you meant the Sonos.

No. No. Sonos.

Sonos. Sonos. Yeah. Yeah. They just look like Sonys. The the Sonos ones basically could easily been introduced by a lot of other companies in Bose. These do not. These kind of have a vibe of the old Bowers and Wilkins that I had, only you can't see in them. The ones that I I was gonna try to pull them out, but they're they're in the bottom drawer, that's gonna be bad. But I just am not gonna try.

No, I don't want that.

That's why I don't wear VisionPros on an airplane, to be honest. Listen.

You know, I got the Nothing 3a a while ago. I never made a video about it because I didn't really get a chance to use it, like, full time, and I didn't wanna give it a, a short change, but I don't know. I kinda I liked it. I think this looks cool. It looks different.

Of course.

That's what

everybody uses with their phone.

That's what everybody uses. But you can even do things like if you're gonna take a picture, it'll show you a dot matrix preview of what the camera sees to help you frame it up, which honestly might be the most useful feature for something like this to be able to frame up a a photo with a back camera. I I kinda wanna try this as well. It's $800, so it's cheaper than other flagships. But, I mean, it it is a distinctive look. I mean, is like

Yeah. Well, and to their credit, I gotta be like, what I should say, the look is not for me. But if you are going to be a new smartphone or headphone entry in 2025 Yeah. You have to do something different because every Android phone essentially looks the same. Right?

Well, that's why I think the camera layout is the more distinctive feature among phones, because you can spot a Samsung Galaxy phone with their, like, three in a row camera. I feel like that's pretty distinctive. And even through a case, you know, you'll see the camera. And so you have the iPhone triangle camera layout. You have the Galaxy straight line, and now you have the nothing whatever that is.

I mean, it looks a lot actually like Apple's. It's just not surrounded by a little mesa of glass.

Yeah. But it's, like, weird. It's, like, it's, like, not even in line.

Well, yeah, everything about that phone is weird. Let's just be clear.

I don't know. Like, I'm I'm down for cool phones.

But it does make you feel like you should be able to rip one of those out and put in a bigger lens or something. Like, that looks modular, which I guess is what they're going for, but there's, a pull tab right there.

Yeah. There's like a little red, like

Well, no. But, like, the right above it and above those two lenses, that looks like you'd stick something in and pull that out. Like, I

don't know. It does. I don't know. It looks interesting. I might I might try to get one. I I don't know. I'm not in the nothing cool crowd. I see a bunch of Apple creators and influencers, and they get invited to nothing events. I'm like, how do I get invited? I sent him an Instagram DM. Never heard back. But anyway, nothing. Nothing. Don't I'm gonna read the phone. Okay.

He's pretty young. I don't know, dude. He's and he's not an AI researcher. He's, like, a manager. Like, he's

He's former CEO of data labeling startup AI. Okay.

Scale AI. Right? And so Scale AI. He I mean, but he's not very old. He's, like, in his twenties. And he Wow. Scale AI is essentially a company that hires lots of low wage people in, like, third world countries to literally label data. Like, this is a picture of a fish. Right? This is a article about this.

Gotcha. Well, and Meta said they're gonna spend hundreds of billions of dollars with a b on AI projects and research in the years to come, and it'll do things. You know? Not actually saying specifically what all this money in AI development will do, but it's going to be amazing apparently. One other interesting I mean, now that you mentioned kind of like about outsourcing to third world countries, I actually have a friend who started working a work from home job, like a completely online.

talking

about, but that's where some of it is coming from. Like these people being paid hundreds of millions of dollars, like they're not doing like that kind of granular stuff. I imagine doing something higher. Like, I don't even know. I don't even know what

Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think there's a lot of this that goes on behind the scenes. I think the interesting piece is, like, why does Medicare so strongly about this that they're willing to do that? And I think because remember, it was, like, two years ago that it was, like, we were all gonna be in the metaverse right now. Like, you and I are gonna be recording this in the metaverse.

Changed the name of the company Right. To Meta.

Because that was the big thing. So I think there's some degree of Zuckerberg knows there's going to be something and he doesn't know what it is. So it's like, this seems to be the thing, so I better do this. Because there are really only two obvious reasons that AI should matter to Meta, at least that I can think of. Listeners, the other guy at primary tech dot f m, email me. That's a real email address. You can email me.

It is. It's a real email.

But one is obviously their their ad engine. Right? AI can can give them the ability. I think that Mark Zuckerberg calls it infinite creative, where essentially you can just say, I'm a shoe company, and I'd like to run ads targeting people who will buy my shoes. And Meta will do it all.

It's pretty small.

And people don't distinguish between like, VR gaming is still just gaming. Right? It's not a separate thing. So you're if someone's gonna play a game, it's like, do I put on the Quest, or do I just pull out the controller for the PlayStation or the Xbox or the or the Switch two or whatever? So that is, I think, the reason that AI is so important.

Okay. So three things. This is a wired article, and it says that Meta's new superintelligence lab is offering top tier research talent pay packages of up to $300,000,000 over four years. Yep. How do I convince my kids to become an AI researcher?

You could only call people that you were friends with.

He's still I think he's still sore about losing the mobile race. These wild efforts for superintelligence and billions of dollars, it does feel like Zuckerberg is saying to himself, I will not lose this race. I don't know if he's going to lose or win because, like you're saying, I feel like opening eye is pretty big at start. But three, I forgot about the ads part, and I'm glad you said that because I actually created a Facebook ad for the first time in a while recently. I had the the reason to do that.

Yeah. And the thing is they definitely want you to just do the AI thing because they wanna eliminate all friction to do that. And they don't care about how they only care about converting because that's what you're gonna pay for. And you you only really care about converting because that's what you're paying for.

Right.

So they don't care how many people see ads that don't convert. They just care. Because if you if you have if they show you a thousand ads and you convert 10 people, that was 10 customers you didn't have before. Even if 990 saw terrible ads. Right? So it's just literally at their at their scale, it is just a numbers game.

So And for a small like, totally get for a small business who doesn't have a marketing team or whatever, if you could tell because the ad creation for Facebook is so obtuse. Like, it's so many steps. It's so laborious to try and create an ad that goes across all the platforms and just formatting things in the right ratios. It's a lot of work. And so if you don't have someone dedicated to doing that, this is why I have friends whose entire business is just helping companies run Facebook ads because it is really a complicated process.

Yeah. It's

weird. It's all weird. Oh, it is weird. We're having a weird time. But listen, I'm glad we're here. I'm glad we have the show to cover it. I'm so

glad we can talk about weird things.

Weird things. Unfortunate news, Microsoft, they're gonna be laying off as many as 9,000 employees. Now there's a large chunk of them in the Xbox and gaming division. And so there's already been layoffs, I think, earlier this summer. More are coming.

Yeah. And they just laid off 6,000, like, not that long ago.

So Not great.

There's a weird trend happening right now that, hey, these large tech companies are laying off people. I'm not saying specifically that this is the case in this example with Microsoft. I wanna be clear about that. But they're laying off people so that they have more money to invest in AI. It it's not that they are laying off people because they want AI to replace what those people were doing, just to be clear.

And apparently, it's seriously hitting morale as close to sources that have, given The Verge. And the, Xbox boss, Phil Spencer, the reason for some of these layoffs they gave is to position gaming in Microsoft for enduring success and allow us to focus on strategic growth areas. Is that code for AI?

No. No. What that code here's the thing, Steven. I I don't wanna go down too far of a rabbit hole, but I wrote an article this morning about the Del Monte company, the people that make, like, the canned corn. Right? The the company is a 139 years old. It's older than the Statue Of Liberty and sliced bread. Like, for real. It's been around a long time. Okay?

That is tough. That is tough.

In order to position our our canned corn company for future success, we're going to sell off all the parts. Well, I don't that doesn't make any those two things don't go together. If you're going to there's no long term success. This is not this is a fire sale. Like, you're just selling off the company. Anyway, sorry. Didn't mean to go out to now. I but I have a radar for when CEOs say these sort of things, and I'm like

That's good.

Somebody told you that would sound good, but one, I'm gonna write about this. I gotta write about CEO. Sorry. I gotta write this down.

I'm glad to give you two think that's two article ideas. I want a running tally. I know. Two article ideas from this episode.

I've already forgotten the first one, though,

Literally for my my kids, it'd be like, for your long term success, I'm gonna kick you out of this house for

ten years. For your long term success, I need you to get a job and stop asking me for an allowance.

I guess the imperfect analogy, but that is for the Del Monte company, seems crazy.

It's insane.

Wow. Okay. All right. Well, let's talk about some Apple stuff. Happier news, although I'm gonna complain about my Apple Music playlist in a second.

What is the time? Beats in was it 2011 or 2012 maybe? I can't remember exactly when they bought them. And then they turned beats streaming service into Apple Music later on. Right. So

That's time is so weird. That feels

2014. They bought Beats in 2014. So, honestly, it wasn't that late because it was, like, a year later. So

Sheesh. That feels crazy to me. Anyway, so they're celebrating ten years. There's a new Apple Music Studios in Los Angeles now, and, they have a whole room dedicated to spatial audio, which looks amazing. I mean, if I'm I I would love a tour, Apple.

I mean, I have a room like that too. It's actually my bathroom. It just echoes everywhere.

Okay. Pretty good. I wanna know what this room does. Like, what is happening? Are there speakers in the walls? There's what is this thing hanging from the ceiling? I need to know.

I need to know.

What is happening in this room?

And is there a toilet? That's all we need to know.

Is this just the bathroom at Apple Music Studio? Oh, I need to know. So, yeah. So that's fun. But with with this, Apple did, like, a replay all playlist in Apple Music for everybody.

Why doesn't if you turn on the whatever the recognize your voice thing is with the HomePods, why doesn't it only play from the Apple Music account that that person is subscribed to?

And listen, before everybody writes, I know that in the home app, can go to the HomePod settings and you can choose which Apple ID is associated with which HomePod. So when music is played, it goes to that Apple ID's history or whatever. One, that feature wasn't available when I first got HomePods, or at least my kids didn't have iCloud accounts to assign it to them. So those years are gone. But also, don't think it works.

Mine is fine. But, I mean, it seems about right, but a lot of the apparently, well, here's the thing.

Still standing by Elton John, is that number one?

A 100%. No. It's not. But the problem is all of these songs are super old because we went we listened to Apple Music a lot, then we did Spotify for a long time, and we've just switched back to Apple Music. So it's like, I haven't listened to that song in twelve years. Well, not twelve years because Apple Music isn't you know what I mean, Although I think some of this has gotta be, like, from my iTunes history because some of these songs are like, I have not listened to that that long.

Anyway Well, I think the play the play counts might carry over.

Yeah. That's just what I'm saying. Some of these are, like, fifteen, twenty year old songs. I'm like Yeah. Okay.

I still have, like, hundreds of playlists that I've, you know, created from iTunes days. I'm like, I don't think I'm ever gonna actually clean that up. I'll just create new playlists and they'll just be at the top. And I'll just always sort from most recent. I'm just

gonna ignore that tab and just move on.

Yeah, exactly. One of the so talking about Apple and AI, there was a report from Mark Gurman's Bloomberg or yeah. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

No. It is Mark Gurman's Bloomberg. Let's be honest.

The Freudian slip, I guess. I'll link the nine to five Mac article though. But basically, Apple might be in negotiations with possibly OpenAI, possibly Anthropic to power the voice assistant, Siri, rather than trying to build their in house model because they're just not getting it. And, you know, a lot of people were celebrating this like, yes, please just do this so it can be good faster, I guess. I mean, I yeah.

Well, okay. Don't overcomplicate it because what you're thinking of is the experience of using ChatGPT versus the experience of using Siri. Think of it this way. Think about the experience of what LLM is going to power the experience of Siri. Okay?

Right. And I forgot about the cloud the private cloud detail, which is where basically OpenAI or Anthropic would create that custom model, run it in private cloud compute so Apple could still say it's private and secure like it would be Yeah.

You would right now, if you send something off to ChatGPT using the voice assistant, you can then find that in your chat GPT if you're logged in.

Right.

Right. So it's you're, you've sent your data off to open AI or to chat GPT. I, this is, I think this is different from that.

And if, if it did mean we could get a good Siri, like in a few months, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Just do it.

Please do this. This is what

you should do. Would say, do that, get a model from OpenAI, Anthropic, put it on private cloud compute so it's private and secure, and then just do it. Yeah. Okay.

But do you hold on. So here's the thing. I'm not even sure that the private and secure is the best benefit here because the fact that you can go back into the ChatGPT app and find all of those the number of times when I go back to something from two weeks ago and continue that conversation, it happens all the time. But there is no record of any of your conversations with Siri that I'm aware of.

You just gave me an idea.

Okay. So that's great. You keep working on your I'm you're giving me ideas. I'm giving you I'm giving you video ideas. But what I'm saying is I I would rather that it all if I'm if it's being powered by that and there's a way to make it work, I would really like to be able to just pick up that conversation again, whether that's in the, quote, Siri app or the ChatGPT app or whatever.

Right. Okay. Well, I'll be down for a better Siri.

A 100%. We still stand firm on that platform.

If that's how we get there. Yeah. Alright. Let's do it. There's rumors that Apple is working on another low end MacBook or cheap MacBook, not running the m series chip, but possibly the a 18 Pro.

And the 12 inch, I think the 12 inch was more expensive and underpowered than the MacBook Air.

Been the Air.

It was like, but what was it? Was it the first Retina laptop?

No. The first Retina and I only know this because it was, like, I was switching jobs at the time. The first Retina was the 2012 MacBook Pro.

Yeah. Don't even know why I would say that. That's right. Because this didn't come until, like, what, 2017 or something, like or 2015. I don't know.

It was shortly after that.

'15, I think. Yeah.

12 inch MacBook release. Let's see. Let's let's fact check ourselves. The 12 inch MacBook 2015. Look at that. April ago, the same time as Apple Music.

Got another I gotta write that down too. Apple's most beloved worst product came out ten years ago.

It was not the like, it was underpowered.

You know, it was terrible. Let's be honest. Everyone loves it, but it was terrible. What they loved about it was it was light and small. Yeah.

Here's I'll put the actual press release in, the show notes. There's no there's no pictures in this press release. Did Apple not used to put pictures in these?

Well, they stopped paying for that server, so they've all just, you know, fallen forward. So they

You need to repurpose it for a private cloud compute.

Right. It just stripped all

the images. But, yeah, it was the 12 inch. It was a retina display, but where was the in it's the Intel I gotta find it. Intel Core m processor. Yeah. Was right. Intel Core m. And it was still OS 10 at the time. It's so funny. So wild. One USB c port too.

I think it was the first Mac that didn't have a fan in it though.

Oh, you might be right. Yeah. I think the MacBook Air

is Where would the MacBook is? You had to bring your own fan. External fan going off.

BYOF. I love I had it for a while, and I love that form factor. So I'm down. Bring it back. Let's try it. And the a 18 pro that runs like the iPhone 16 pro probably is actually faster than the m one. I was seeing people, like,

post Yeah.

On mass

This is what they should do. I hope they have a whole warehouse full of m one MacBook Air cases. Just reenter seriously, just reintroduce that with the a 18 pro in it. Call it whatever the heck you like, the MacBook Air Junior. Don't call it that. Don't call

it that.

But just call it something. But, like, honestly, like, that form factor is still fantastic. And if you put an a 18 pro in it, I would just buy one for all my children and be like, stop using Chromebooks. Never touch one again.

And I think, people were saying, you know, the Walmart m one MacBook Air, which was $650 or something.

$6.49. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that's Apple probably likes having a computer that cheap even if they're not selling it directly. But if they sold a 650 doll if they imagine just imagine. They had a $500, it would never be that

cheap. It'll be $7.99 for 16 gigs of memory and a 128 gigs of of storage. Probably worth dollars different.

But I'm gonna say something different just so we can see who's right. I'm gonna say $7.49. $7.40

not different. You gotta think of the first number has to be different.

No. It says $50 difference. I'm say it starts at $7.49. We'll come back to this, episode.

Do any of its of Apple's Macs start with 49? No. They all start with $9.09 $9.09 or yeah. They all start literally with either $9.09 9 or higher.

If you go to, like, the other configurations wait. Isn't the iMac twelve forty nine? No. Hold on. Hold I know. Let me check let me check out. This is the part of the segment where we're just gonna know it's twelve ninety nine. Shoot. You were right.

I'm just telling you. I don't think any of the Macs start that at that way.

This is the segment of the show where we browse apple.com together. And, if you wanna join us over on YouTube

If Steven finds something and suddenly empties his bank account.

Youtube.com/@primarytechshow. Let's see. Here we go. Yeah. They're all 90 nines. Yeah. You're right.

But that's fine. You picked 49, so that's good. I'm I'm really happy about that. But, yeah, it's gonna the only time they sell something that starts in ends in 49 is when they sell it at Walmart. So there you go.

Wait a minute. I like this conspiracy theory. Oh, yeah. Because the iPhone 16 e is $5.99. Oh, shoot. Wait a minute. What about the isn't the 16? $7.99. Wait a minute. Did you just did we just uncover Apple's secret pricing scheme?

Not really. Not really. You should do a video on it and just I just uncovered Apple's secret pricing scheme.

Apple's secret pricing scheme. If they sell it at Walmart, it's gonna 5.

The basic iPad is what? $3.49? Is that right? Or something. So there are That's $3.29. Talking about Mac. Okay. But I'm just so I was talking specifically about Mac.

Yeah. About Mac. The original iPad is $3.29. I think that some of the education discounts is 49, but I'm not gonna go check it. I don't wanna

Also, that's irrelevant because that not what I was saying.

I know, I know, I know.

We have padded this episode. I'm proud of us.

No, no. This is not padding. This is content. Capital C. Two other quick stories before I wanna talk to you about Spotify versus Apple Music because you recently switched.

Well, wait. Why is that wild?

What is another web app that has gone public?

Salesforce. One of the largest tech companies. It's the largest company in San It literally pioneered.

Is there a difference, though, between a SaaS and a web app? I would argue there is. Well because there's two

Figma is SaaS, software as a service.

Yeah. Is just web app just another way to say SaaS then?

No. Because you could see like, I mean, technically, now Adobe is software as a service, but you can download the things and install them on your computer. So they're not this but I'm just saying, like, the most obvious example would be Salesforce, right, of a company of a public I mean, what is what is Salesforce's market cap? $260,000,000,000 company, and it's just a bunch of web apps.

I guess that's fair. Well, I guess when I think of Salesforce, I think it's like a back end power, like it powers the CRM and all that kind of stuff of a company. Big Muff feels like the first modern web app, I guess, to me. I might not have good reasoning for

that. I mean It

just feels that.

Google Docs is a web app. It's used by a billion people. I mean, never mind Google Search, but that feels a little different. But, like, Google Docs is Microsoft Word, but it's a web app. Also, you can get Microsoft Word as a web app. But I just think it's funny that you're thinking, like, the the shocking part of this story is that Figma is a web app.

It's shocking that it was almost acquired and then, you know, now it's going public. But

Canva. Canva, also a web app.

Alright. You okay. I'll

Netflix, also a web app. Sorry. I did not

I called something

a web app. A T shirt that just says, I can't believe it's a web app. Well, no. But honestly, the only reason I'm picking on you is literally almost everything now that's new is just a web app.

Well, and that's what I guess I was feeling. It's like this no context, poor reasoning. It feels like the first modern, like this company started as a web app, is a web app. That's how everyone uses it, is only on the web. And that's where it lives.

Yeah. I don't have anything to say, although good for them because they Yeah. They tried to get acquired, the EU was like, remember how we don't like tech companies? You can't do that.

Wow. All right. And last thing before we get to personal tech. I need to mention this. If you wanna listen to someone really talk about this Oh my god.

It makes me so mad. Makes

me so But Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16,000,000. So here's the deal. Paramount, which is the parent company of CBS, CBS aired that interview with Kamala Harris during the election cycle last year. The Trump Trump claimed that they edited the interview in certain ways or whatever, and I forget exactly what it was, defamation or whatever. But

He said it was deceptive editing that influenced the election.

Deceptive editing, which he won the election, so I don't know anyway. Right. So he sued CBS for the for the deceptive editing. And Paramount, the other context is is trying to acquire or merge with Skydance Media, and this was something the FCC could have stopped, the merger. And it really feels like Paramount has paid this $16,000,000 settlement so it can go through with what it wanted, which was to merge with Skydance Media.

Well, here's the thing. The precedent was actually a different case. What's important about this case is that they settled for essentially the exact same amount of money that ABC settled for because president Trump sued ABC over, I think George Stephanopoulos step Stephanopoulos said something on the air, about the, the the Gene Carroll case. And so Trump sued him over it for defamation, And ABC settled and basically made a donation to his presidential library. So if we're keeping score, Trump's presidential library now has a $15,000,000 donation from ABC, a $16,000,000 donation from CBS, and a $7.47 from, like, what was it, Qatar or whatever, like that, Qatar?

Right. Trump did seek $20,000,000,000 at first. If he

had gun But he also you know that meme of president Trump, like, yelling at the kid mowing the rose garden or whatever like that? He probably sought $20,000,000,000 from that kid too. Like, for you clipped one of my hedges.

I I will be honest. I'm gonna listen to Neil and talk about this because he's, you know, he gonna be mad.

Well, everybody should be mad because Yeah. I mean, you you don't have to be mad at Trump. Like, I don't think that matters. Like, fine. Whatever. You you can file lawsuits. Whatever. I mean, it's it's lame. But you CBS has lost, like, the executive producer of sixty minutes, the head of their news division. All these people are resigning because, like, we don't wanna be a part of this.

Man, That's not fun.

Alright.

Alright. Let's talk let's talk about something.

We need some more cloud we need a palate cleanser, they as they call it.

Palate cleanser, Spotify with ads.

Yeah. Do you Something else for you to get mad about.

I've never I don't think I ever paid for Spotify Premium, but I've also never used it. I've always been an Apple Music user. But I do have to jump in sometimes to make videos about Spotify, especially as it relates to podcasting. But you you legit used Spotify for years paying for Spotify Premium? Is that accurate?

We, as a fam we paid for a family plan for quite a while. And we had, like, six six accounts on there. Meh. I think that's probably true. There's six of us. So yeah. I mean, like but it was, like, 20 a month for Spotify, but everyone liked using Spotify. And to be fair, I find Spotify's interface better for the most part, better than Apple Music's interface. I couldn't necessarily tell you why. I think Spotify does a better job of trying to make the listening experience of music more immersive.

Well, I think most people, at least what I see on social media, this curated playlist from Spotify are one of the better features. Because people will say, if Apple Music had as good curated playlist as Spotify, I would switch because people like the design of Apple Music, especially with, like, the full screen artwork. And now with iOS 26, you're gonna have that full lock screen animated artwork. So as you're listening to music, like, whole lock screen is gonna be animated Apple Music stuff.

Is that is that really a feature benefit? Because here's the thing. Most of the time when I'm listening to music, my phone is in my pocket.

Yeah. But I think people, if they have it on the table or whatever, like, it looks really cool.

But why are wasting battery resources on a thing that have I I'm

not sure. Only be when you tap the screen. You should try it. It looks cool. And, you know, if it just because it looks cool, that's a reason to do it. Yeah.

Okay. Fine.

As long as it looks cool. But, anyway, now that you've so you did Spotify Premium for a long time, now you don't. How is that different?

It's so bad. The free version of Spotify is aggressively hostile towards its users because they obviously want you to pay to the extent that if you go to so I'm I our our our church has a, like, a music label. That's not really true, but they release songs. Like, they've they have art people who've written songs and released them.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So I wanted to go into Spotify because I wanted to see, like, the Canvas thing, like, the Spotify Canvas. Well, the only way to see that is if you're playing the song. So I go to play the song. So I find the artist. I tap on the song that the brand new song I wanna listen to, and I have to watch a thirty second ad from T Mobile first. And you can't get out of it. There's no x. You can't be like, forget it. Don't wanna listen to anything.

Right.

Not I have a free service and it sucks and I'm gonna make it worse because then maybe you'll pay for the paid service. No. I just won't open your app anymore. And it's just I it's so big that I've not used any survey. Like, even ChatGPT. The free versus ChatGPT is great. You can't use it as much, and it doesn't remember who you are, but maybe that's a benefit. Right? Not a bug. But the free version of Spotify, it's like it's like the old days when you used to use what's it?

Pandora.

Yeah. Yeah. You just type in I wanna listen to chill vibes or something, and it'll just play you songs. You didn't get to decide, and you can only skip a couple times. Fine. But that was like the purpose of that app. Right? But this is like, I'm it's bad.

So it's funny that the experience I get, I'll make videos on the Riverside YouTube channel about the podcast features in the app. And if you use Spotify to listen, there's a very small percentage that listen to this show on Spotify, but there are a couple 100 of you. The the podcast experience is actually, I think, better than the music experience. Sure. Because now, features pod if you follow podcasts, that's what you do a majority of the time, it just shows you that on the homepage of Spotify.

Look at that.

And if you have a video version of a show, it will just start auto playing the video even if someone doesn't follow the show. But Spotify will try and figure out if they're interested in technology. I think their discovery for podcasts is actually great, and they recently added a following tab so you can just see episodes of the podcast you follow and, play those. Now I don't think it's up next queue is great, and the actual, like, podcast player experience, again, it has to split the difference between being both music and podcast player. But the podcast experience is good, you don't see as many ads with the podcast.

But the difference is it's because they're not paying any licensing royalties for those podcasts as opposed to the music. Right?

Right. And if and if podcast creators sign up for the, like, insert ads into my show to make money from it, well, then the ads are in the show. Like, you don't have to see the ads, like, in the feed or as you're browsing podcasts. It's when you listen to them. So the only parallel I wanted to mention is YouTube Premium, one of the best streaming services, that you could pay for. One of the best, you know, one of best entertainment

I don't understand people who don't pay for that. Well, because it's the same. YouTube without YouTube Premium is dangerous Like, it's bad. Listen.

I'm thankful for AdSense because I get to benefit from that from my own YouTube channel. I get it paid for people watching my videos. But like whenever I'm logged into the Riverside YouTube channel, which doesn't have YouTube premium, and I try to watch something, it is hair pulling of like, what is happening right now? And when there's like two unskippable ads at the beginning, which I don't think I put those in my videos, but if I do, I apologize and I stop, let me know. It is a terrible, terrible experience, and I'm like, ugh.

Yeah. Well, it's not though it's not as bad, though. Listen. I also benefit from ads on the Internet, so I'm not but I have nothing to do with that. Like, unlike a YouTuber, I never have to think about any of that kind of thing.

And the ad is like one of the local ads from, like, the car dealership and it's like, oh, yeah.

They're still better than Apple news ads though.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. The Apple News ads still have not gotten better. I will say we watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy with my mom every week. We go over to her house for dinner, and we get to see the local ads because it's just like over the air antenna. And like the dealership ads and stuff where it's like somebody on a green screen. They're obviously reading a teleprompter, sometimes not even looking into the camera. Like, I'm so sorry, but this is kind of hilarious. It's amazing. Alright.

It's gonna make it's fine.

We're about Brave for Safari in the bonus episode. So listen. Here are all the benefits you get when you support the show. Okay? You're get our bonus episode every week.

Paul Stevens cussing.

Yeah. All of that. And, so we can have a feed of that, like ATP, if you're familiar with that, their bootleg feed. So that can be an additional benefit. I think we'll try it. I have to set up two new shows to figure out how to do that in Apple Podcast and Memberful, but I'll do it. I will do it, and we'll try it out. So you get a ton of benefits. So we would love if you support the show. You can do it either in Apple Podcasts or at join.primarytech.fm.